HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
Here are some tracking metrics an ad server might capture:
•
impressions
•
clicks
•
interactions or activities
•
interaction time
•
video metrics
•
play/pause/stop/restart/replay
•
starts and completion rates
Depending on the necessities of the creative, other tracking requirements could be data collects, such as e-mail
addresses, names, and phone numbers. This information is a user-controlled process: the viewer needs to enter
information into a form field within the ad.
Third-Party Tracking
Another tracking concept in digital advertising involves third-party redirects and third-party tracking validation.
A third-party tracking situation is one where another analytics company, in order to verify metrics, places tracking
pixels within the creative, along with the ad servers. Platforms used in third-party tracking include Dart, Atlas, and
ComScore 1x1's, to name a few. Typically, DoubleClick's Dart, Microsoft's Atlas and ComScore provide tracking pixels
within a creative that they're not hosting and serving. 1x1's are invisible GIFs (image files) that fire when a user views
an ad or performs some type of interaction. This could be one or several pixels depending on the advertiser's needs
for the campaign.
The other form of third-party tracking uses redirects. Redirects are engaged when a user performs a click through
action within the ad unit and the user is channeled through a redirect server location before it lands on the final
destination. Advertisers can include as many redirects as they wish to validate the click-tracking within an ad unit.
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traditionally, the more redirects you add to a UrL string, the more discrepancies in reporting you are likely to
see. also, UrLs could be cut off due to browser limitations; the user would end up on a bad landing page.
Note
Figures
1-3
and
1-4
show how one-click action by a user can actually ping a few different locations before it
presents a landing page. Figure
1-3
illustrates what is called an in-band click redirect. In-band is the older of the two
methods requiring a “daisy chain” effect to ping servers.
Figure 1-3.
How an in-band click redirects work
